


creatures of habit

by EgNogg



Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, alternate title: cant sleep without holding onto a motherfucker, but its short tho, dear lord this is cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 00:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18201260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgNogg/pseuds/EgNogg
Summary: we all have rituals, memories, people we cling to when not much else seems certain





	creatures of habit

**Author's Note:**

> i caught up on neoscum and got so bored without new episodes to binge that i wrote this! because im a sappy bitch!!! hope you guys like it! (constructive criticism is always appreciated!!)

The first few times they all shared a motel room together were awkward, to say the least. Dak was having _fun_ dreams and everyone had to know about it. Pox slept outside. Zenith didn’t even sleep, as far as Tech could see he just spent seven hours staring at a wall. In retrospect things were bound to be sort of weird at first. Like taking handfuls of pieces from different, unfinished puzzles and trying to fit them into a cohesive picture.

But it didn’t take long for the newly-dubbed Neoscum to learn each other’s sleep habits and adjust accordingly. They settled into each other quickly, almost urgently. One would think with all of their collective trauma/trust issues/etcetera it would have taken them longer than a cork soled sandal to be broken in to the shapes and contours of three barely-not-strangers, but barely one state border later and they’re trying to squeeze themselves into a tight enough structure to keep anyone from leaving. It’s almost funny and kind of pathetic, like a sad clown. But they laugh amongst themselves about Booboo the Dolorous Fool That Is Their Current Circumstances and catch rest when or wherever they can.

Dak stays to the side of the pile. You could say he’s something of an early riser, and he’d rather not disturb the rest of them at such ungodly hours of the morning. He learned how to remove himself from a shared bed/couch/floor without waking anyone around him a long time ago. Early mornings like this still bring to mind faces he hasn’t seen since other early mornings some number of years past. He doesn’t want these three to join those ranks. When he pulls himself away from the by-now familiar warmth and skin (and metal and silk robes and masses of curly silver hair) and soft, slow breaths Dak reminds himself he’s not leaving. He just wants them to wake up to something nice or at least edible from whatever scraps and leftovers are sitting around whoever’s house this is.

At the other end is Tech. He starts every night curled into a tight ball and after hours of tossing and turning and mumbling ends up sprawled across everyone else. Sometimes he’ll wake himself up and mutter slurred apologies to the others before realizing they’re still asleep. It’s nice to have people to sleep next to. When he was really small he would sleep next to Nana when he had bad dreams, which was often. Then he got a little bit older and started worrying he might accidentally kick or roll over her and hurt her very badly, and then he couldn’t sleep next to her anymore because she slept in a big, metal bed and then he couldn’t see her anymore because the people behind the desk said visiting hours were over even though he knew they were open for at least seven more minutes and he knows he’s gonna get chewed out tomorrow for leaving the studio early again and he jolts awake with a snort because he thinks he just elbowed Pox in the face, sorry.

Zenith sleeps like a corpse. Eerily still, flat on his back with his hands at his sides. You can only barely feel the rising and falling of shallow breaths, only barely hear the slow pulsing of a mostly human heart, if you put your ear right up against his chest. Sometimes he tenses up, his fists and jaw clench and his brow furrows and he looks very small and very cold. Everyone thinks he’s a heavy sleeper, which is partially true. He rarely lets himself open his eyes without a familiar voice or hand shaking him to consciousness. That way he knows he won’t wake up to cold white lights and masked faces looking down at him with cold eyes and cold whirring steel, picking away beneath his skin, between his nerves, inside his skull. Sometimes he wakes up early, though. And he just keeps his eyes closed and stays lying under Pox and Tech and Dak if he’s still there because they’re warm.

Pox, all angles and sharp edges, somehow manages to tangle herself and her limbs and hair in everyone else’s without causing any discomfort. She’s used to sharing close sleeping quarters, from back when she would sneak across the long, white marble hallway to a room that looked like hers into a canopied bed that looked like hers to share secrets with a girl who had a face that looked like hers. But now that room and that canopy and that girl are all far far away, and this truck and these people are her greatest chance of seeing that face and never seeing those rooms again. So she keeps them close. She wraps her arms and legs around as much of them as she can, just like how she used to keep Pandora close. Closer, even. By now she knows that sometimes you still lose people no matter how close you try to hold them.

And then comes either morning or armed gunmen and they have to untangle themselves for a day or two or several of having no sleep and no idea what’s happening or where they’re going or who’s coming for them. But at some point the dust settles. They patch each other up. They eat. They decide whether to ignore or dive head first into whatever unpleasant memories happen to appear. And at the end of the night the Neoscum weave themselves into a pattern that has become one of the few constants in their lives over the past few weeks. They don’t know where the next hail of bullets or team of killers or swarm of drones will come from, but they know there’s always a nearby hand to hold onto or a shoulder to lean on or a pair of arms to collapse into, and for now that’s enough.


End file.
